Ideas for rear weights to balance FEL loads (post pics too)

[Spiveyman]

Hey LetsRoll, nice to hear from another KY boy - and nice tractor. Not surprised to see a KY boy with a blue tractor. I'm in Richmond, just south of Lexington. We buy cattle from people in Nortonville and Russelville and they are really complaining about the drought down there. Most are having to switch to some other kind of feed already. It'll be an expensive winter for those trying to hold on to their herds. If you're in the market to buy and happen to have the grass for them, this is your year.

texasjohn, sounds like you are where we were last year. We got so much rain it was insane. It was the wetest September ever. I could barely give hay away last year. I had an extra couple hundred bales, sold some 6X6's for $13 - it was a mix of tall fescue and red clover, cut just right, but not wrapped. Gave some away, some is still sitting around getting older. This year hasn't been so great for us, not a disaster, but not great. Decent hay started out around $30, I've heard it going for as high as $40. If you were inclined to sell your hay though it would be smart to sit on it until about Jan, I bet it'll fetch a pretty high dollar by then. Especially if we have a lot of snow this year. That's the other thing, last winter was so mild and we had so much rain we had enough grass to pasture our cattle all winter. Maybe dropped 6 bales out there all year and still got great weight gains. Crazy weather.

 

[teeravis1]

I finally got time to get my ballast box done. Here are some pics. I used a 30 gallon rubbermaid garbage can, a spreader bar, some scrap pieces of rebar, a couple scrap pieces of steel, and filled it up with concrete. It came out to be a 540 lb ballast.

 

[teeravis1]

Here are the pics, sorry about the first screw up.

 

[Soundguy]

It's great to see all the different things people use. Sounds like the biggest rule of thumb is use what you can find and make it work.

here's my rear weight, on the cheap..

Started out with a used cattle feed tub, cost=free
about 450# bagged concrete, cost = about 15$
An old 3pt drawbar that came with one of my junkers cost= free
bolt and metal stock hardware, cost = free or a few bucks at a hardware store..


I bolted the 3pt drawbar tot he bottom o fthe feed tub using a couple 8" carriage bolts, and wasshers and nuts.. I left the 6" of bolt thread and head sied sticking up into the concrete with the bottom portion of the thread and the nuts actually on the outside.. thus it took 2 nuts per bolt.. one on the inside, and one on the underside.

Set on 3pt and block up to level

add concrete and mix in tub.

Add your scrap iron pieces that have been drilled for a toplink hole. I pinned my pieces to the toplink so they would be spaced correctly, and then set them in the concrete about 6".. thus I proppe dthe toplink up to make correct geometery. I added a welded on bolt on eich piece of iron welded perpendicular to the iron, to give the concrete something to hold on to.


let cure.. and walla.. a 20$ or less weight tub.

As others said.. you can add pvc pipes to it to hold rakes / shovels.. or even conctrete in a reciever hitch toungue.. etc.

If you ever want to ditch it, just run 2 nuts off the bottom and recover your old drawbar and then ditch the concrete plug..

Soundguy

 

[Spiveyman]

That's a good idea to make it so that you could recover the draw bar if you needed to. I don't have one, and checked at TSC, a new one is over $50. I saw some sold at a farm machinery auction at our stock yards in June. I may wait for the next round of auctions and pick up one cheap.

 

[teeravis1]

My rubbermaid garabage can cost $12, the spreader bar cost $27, everything else was free. So my ballast cost me under $40, which I thought was great.

That's a good idea to make it so that you could recover the draw bar if you needed to. I don't have one, and checked at TSC, a new one is over $50. I saw some sold at a farm machinery auction at our stock yards in June. I may wait for the next round of auctions and pick up one cheap.

 

[Rara Avis]

The other thing you can do...is spec up a block size that will fit your three point and then stop by your local concrete op and see if he will pour an excess from any of the returning trucks for a modest price...and you could give them a junk spreader bar to put into the block and they normally put a piece of rebar in the top, so they can move them around the yard, which you should be able to hook your top link to...

 

[teeravis1]

Thats how I got my concrete free, I dropped off my garbage can one saturday at the local concrete ready mix, and they waited until they had a truck come back with enough left in it to fill it (30 gallons = .15 cy). Then I picked it up the next saturday. Made for a nice 540 lb ballast.

 

[N80]

This may seem a bit boring, but I just leave my box blade on. Tires are filled too. The BB is only 580 pounds but that has been sufficient for anything I've wanted to carry in the FEL on my 45 hp tractor. Plus, if you just happen to need the BB, its there!

 

[3RRL]

I am with you George.
That makes good sense to me. In fact, sometimes I wish I could take along the boxblade, backhoe, brush hog and PHD all at the same time. I need to get one of those CNC tool changers for my 3pt stuff.